I don't think this is on the same level as Sapiens or Homo Deus, and many of the arguments seem to be the same as those presented in those works. Overall it was a nice read, but don't be surprised if you end up scratching your head.

It has been a long while since I’ve written about my reading. “The world is too much with us,” us poor working folks, or as Harari says in his latest, everyone is too busy to look around and analyze how our world is shifting, changing, transforming, and dangerously so. Hence, why Harari sees his role, the historian’s role, as one providing clarity. Reading 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, certainly “clarifies” what ills beset our world. Moreover, his book is fearless, brilliant, and terrifying.

“All is vanity, saith the preacher” … Harari takes our Western “vanities”, our most closely-held ideals, as illusions, as the fictions of childish adults, and bashes our shibboleths to smithereens. It is a powerful, relentless argument that strips away at every illusion of Western cultural, political, religious, and economic bulwarks. Not that the East escapes: he has less to say about it, but what he does say, stays pretty much in the same vein. No one is exempt and no one escapes from Harari’s frightening intellect. In the end, not even Harari himself.

I read Harari’s Sapiens when it came out in paperback a few years ago and was blown away by it. His analysis of how we make fictions to enslave ourselves within institutions bordered on the satiric. Indeed, while most readers would be terrified of Harari’s analyses, I thought he was writing tongue-in-cheek satire. I chuckled through reading most of it. I was wrong, of course, but this is what comes of reading too much fiction … in my own vanity, I’d hoped the joke was on Harari: I read his critique of fiction as a fiction …

21 Lessons, however, is a more urgent, more concerned book. Harari isn’t gazing with his gimlet eye at the past, nor is he coolly predicting the possible future. 21 Lessons is about the here and now and, as such, is a more caring book, placing human suffering as central to human experience and important to consider and contemplate. Harari’s voice rings truer and clearer, and doesn’t have the sharp, satiric flights of fancy that Sapiens did (though his sarcasm still comes through):

In this book I want to zoom in on the here and now. My focus is on current affairs and on the immediate future of human societies. What is happening right now? What are today’s greatest challenges and most important choices? What should we pay attention to? What should we teach our kids?

My agenda here is global. I look at the major forces that shape societies all over the world and that are likely to influence the future of our planet as a whole … this book is intended not as a historical narrative but rather as a selection of lessons. These lessons do not conclude with simple answers. They aim to simulate further thinking and help readers participate in some of the major conversations of our time … the overarching question remains the same: what is happening in the world today, and what is the deep meaning of these events?

Harari identifies and analyzes three dangers to the world: “ecological collapse and technological disruption” and the demise of liberal democracy. As Harari brilliantly pens, his concern is “life in the age of bewilderment, when the old stories have collapsed and no new story has emerged so far to replace them.”

Harari breaks it down for us: how liberal democracy cannot answer the threat of “ecological collapse and technological disruption.” It was born in the age of industrialization, triumphed over the stories of fascism and communism and now flounders to answer, ideologically, to our greatest quandaries. According to my understanding of Harari, liberal democracy is to the 21st century what the “sick old man of Europe,” the Ottoman Empire, was to the 20th. Harari sees the challenges posed by “infotech and biotech” as requiring “new social and political models,” models not yet born and an old one that cannot serve as the Bard wrote, as prologue. Our connection to the past as a cohesive, ongoing narrative is broken, Harari says, and we cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again. We resort to “bewilderment,” cynicism, despair, quixotic utopian vision or the deepest, darkest dystopian nightmare. In a way, Harari urges us to calm down, take a breath, not all is lost … yet. BUT, says Harari, as we cling to the old models, we are dooming ourselves. Nothing can stand in the way of the rhetorical genius that is Harari: not religious belief, not economic theory, not political ideology.

Once in a while, however, as Harari plows ahead, tossing ideals like baled haystacks (I think I just mixed my metaphor, but Harari will have you mixing cocktails, so why not a metaphor?), a bright light of compassion comes through, as in this gem when he predicts a future without viable work for humankind: ” … new social and economic models … should be guided by the principle of protecting humans rather than jobs.” Simple. True. So so difficult in this age of oligarchical expediency.

Most of the time, however, Harari speaks frightening truth in elegant raw language and I couldn’t help but sadly nod assent: “For thousands of years Homo sapiens behaved as an ecological serial killer; now it is morphing into an ecological mass murderer.” He continues, in ever more frightening analyses of our global civilization’s ills: ” .. nuclear war, ecological collapse, and technological disruption – is enough to threaten the future of human civilization. But taken together, they add up to an unprecedented existential crisis, especially because they are likely to reinforce and compound one another.” As Harari rightly, clearly, and succinctly predicts our sicknesses, he chops away at our final and most dearly-held fiction: the belief in our own freedom, in what a Christian would call “free will.” Between biology and algorithmic predictability, Harari sees no room for human freedom. And yet, here he is … urging us to see clearly, not through an illusive glass darkly, to divest ourselves even of the last vestiges of humanistic culture.

His problem, which becomes our problem, if we accept his analysis, is that we, and he, have worked ourselves into an existential corner. I saw Harari’s points, I live them every day, turn on the news, consider a scorching planet, political disarray, narrowing minds, and an ever growing chasm between want and excess. Where does Harari situate possibility, if not hope? He doesn’t offer answers, but proposes tools. He calls for considering human suffering, taking a stance of humility, and meditating and seeking truth. I leave with this from 21 Lessons:

Truth and power can travel together only so far. Sooner or later they go their separate paths. If you want power, at some point you will have to start spreading fictions. [Ahem, say I, lies.] If you want to know the truth about the world, free of all fictions, then at some point you will have to renounce power. You will have to admit things that will make it more difficult to gain allies and inspire followers. Even more crucially, you will have to acknowledge some uncomfortable facts about yourself, about the sources of your current power, and about the reasons you want more power.

… If … you want to retain some control over your personal existence and the future of life, you have to run faster than the algorithms, faster than Amazon and the government, and get to know yourself before they do. To run fast, don’t take much baggage with you. Leave all your illusions behind. They are very heavy … people don’t need to create any meaning. They just need to realize that there is no meaning, and therefore be liberated from the suffering caused by our attachments and our identification with empty phenomena.

Advocating humility, Harari answers only for himself and what he has found in Buddhist meditation. He advises us to study suffering, to divest ourselves of myths and the weaving of identities. In some ways, I couldn’t help but feel an existential desert where Harari’s brilliantly identified quagmire was, our quagmire, “ignorant armies,” internal and external “clash[ing] by night”. No, “love, let us be true to one another” for Harari: but the slow, sure divesting of self, of the illusion of self, no more Holdens, no more Hamlets. And yet, Harari so very much admires Huxley’s Brave New World, a novel that lays claim to our right to suffer … in love and sickness, in passion and an entire mess of human fallibility. Harari is brilliant, compelling, sharply, cynically funny, and offers us a chance to be intellectually and emotionally challenged. Yeah, read his 21 Lessons.

Yuval Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is published by Signal. It was release on Sept. 4th. I received an e-ARC from Signal via Netgalley.

#21lessonsForThe21stCentury #NetGalley

The author continues to amazing with his controversial speech. The book covers most of the challenging aspects of the Artificial Intelligence and the BioTechnologies against the future of the Humanity. The book is well documented and I recommend it to use it for Ethics classes or General Philosophy classes for college and university students. Spectacular book!

I requested a preview copy of 21 LESSONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY by Yuval Noah Harari because of the popularity of his previous work (Sapiens and Homo Deus) and the many starred reviews (Booklist, Kirkus and Publishers Weekly) which this new title received. However, I found this text to be dry and difficult to read, thereby aligning more with views expressed in The Wall Street Journal which says "much of the text is windy punditry." I would not be quite so blunt in my assessment, but would tend to turn to some of the many quality sources from which Harari quotes and spend time with those instead.

Today, Yuval Noah Harari launched his third book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Although it’s weaker than his first two books (Sapiens and Homo Deus), it’s still excellent and worth reading.

It seems that no other historian spends more time talking about the future than Harari. He should change the Historian label for the Futurist title.

The 21 lessons are organized into 5 parts.

Instead of repeating the 21 chapter titles (which are coyer than descriptive), I’ll succinctly summarize the takeaway from the chapter.

Here’s a teaser of what Harari’s 21 lessons are:



Part I: The Technological Challenge: Is the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced.

1. Disillusionment: The end of history has been postponed (i.e., Liberalism can’t declare victory yet).

2. Work: AI and robotics will displace millions of jobs. Universal Basic Income (UBI) may turn us into contemplating creatures.

3. Liberty: Digital dictatorships, fed by Big Data algorithms, may become the kings of the 21st century.

4. Equality: Just like Big Data algorithms may end our liberty, they may also create the most unequal society since the Middle Ages. How do we regulate the ownership of data?



Part II: The Political Challenge: We must overcome our tribalism.

5. Community: Polarized society and community breakdown is something that social media isn’t helping.

6. Civilization: The global village has arrived.

7. Nationalism: It’s a backlash against globalization and is a harmful distraction; we can’t deglobalize.

8. Religion: Faith a problem, not a solution.

9. Immigration: The EU must set the example on how to integrate immigrants if we are to continue to harness the positive power of immigration.



Part III: Despair and Hope: Keep our fears under control and be humbler.

10. Terrorism: We overestimate the danger terrorists pose but that could change if they get hold of real WMDs.

11. War: It’s possible that it may engulf the world again.

12. Humility: A must-read chapter about how we all vastly overestimate our importance and the importance of our tribe.

13. God: Doesn’t exist.

14. Secularism: Holds the key to progress.



Part IV: Truth: How to not fall for fake news.

15. Ignorance: We are still ignorant—and that’s OK.

16. Justice: Minorities, gender, LGBT, and animal rights will continue to evolve.

17. Post-truth: Pay for reliable news and read scientific literature.

18. Science Fiction: Don’t confuse intelligence with consciousness.



Part V: Resilience: How to live in the Age of Bewilderment.

19. Education: We are hacking humans and our education system isn’t ready for it.

20. Meaning: You must observe suffering and exploring it for what it is.

21: Meditation: You should meditate.



Verdict

Although Harari tries to tie these 21 ideas together, the book feels more like 21 essays rather than a coherent book like his two previous tomes. At times, it feels like a bit of a ramble.

Still, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth reading.

Harari is always worth reading.

I was hoping that this book would top his best book, Homo Deus, but it doesn’t.

VERDICT: 9/10.

The 21 Lessons for the 21st Century cover five broad areas: technology, politics, despair and hope, truth and resilience.

In the 1990s, it appeared that liberalism had won its war with communism and facism. Even Russia had become, nominally at least, democratic. During the Trump and Brexit era, liberalism is once again on the ropes. Trump has an agenda of liberty only for Americans with a wall forcing foreigners to stay out. England, with Brexit, is attempting to limit liberty to only their own citizens too.

What is replacing liberalism? Nationalism and nostalgia for each country’s most prosperous time in history is being felt by both the US, England and even Russia with Putin and his tsarist fantasies. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century attempts to give some suggestions for where we should go idealogically from here. Per the book, in the shadow of the coming biotech and infotech revolutions with the threat of ecological collapse looming, zenophobia will not be easy or effective.

During the industrial revolution, machines replaced mankind’s physical abilities by moving heavy objects and speeding up processes beyond what man could do. With the recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), machines may soon be able to replace mankind’s thinking abilities too. When that happens, what advantage will man have over machine? Worse, what jobs will be available?

Once AI advances to replace soldiers, what will prevent rich megalomaniacs from taking over the world? Once biotechnology allows the DNA manipulation of humans into superhumans, how will the rest of us survive? This and other ominous questions are asked throughout this book. Only the last few chapters have anything positive to say about mankind’s near future.

While this is an important book to read, its unfailingly grim view is tough to take on. Even though the future may not contain conscious robots like in the Terminator, it still seems pretty scary. While it seems credulous to say so, current times may be looked back on as the good ol’ days by our grandchildren.

If you lean toward depression or always see the glass as half empty, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century may not be a good reading choice. If you are staunchly religious, this book pushes secularism rather heavily. It goes so far as to call religion the most long lasting fake news. Also, if you are a Trump or Putin fan, be aware that both are demonized within this book. Because this book reflects more of the author’s views than any scholarly appraisal of trends or even actual events, I can only give it 2 stars. I think it will anger or scare most readers more than inform them. Such a shame and disappointment from the highly acclaimed author of Sapiens and Homo Deus.

Thanks to the publisher, Random House, and NetGalley for an advance copy.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century should be read by everyone! This book serves as a center to Harari's previous works, and focuses on what will or can or is happening in our ever-changing 21st Century. Written in a conversational style and divided into 5 different topics with each chapter a subtopic under the general topic, the book's content pushes one to think outside of their comfort zone, to think about not just themselves, but about the biggest problems and actions happening in our world today. I enjoyed the fact that Harari presented information about each subtopic and then explored various scenarios that could play out depending on human decisions and reactions to the various situations.
Each page of this book forced me to really analyze and question how I impact the world, to questions if I can impact the world, or does the world just impact me? How much will our world change, will we allow the hypothetical changes to happen or will we shrink in on ourselves and hinder progress? Is progress just for progress sake worth the human cost that may come with it? So many questions have been prompted inside me by reading this book.

Thank you, NetGalley and Spiegel & Grau (Random House Imprint) for providing me an eGalley of Harari's newest book in exchange for an honest review.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Yuval Noah Harari has become a sensation, and this is due in no small part to his lucid prose and willingness to tackle complex issues which many writers, until rather recently, have been loath to engage with. His purpose in writing is not to offer solutions but rather to open a debate about the future which identifies and focuses on issues that really matter, such as climate change and artificial intelligence, rather than the inanity which so often dominates public discourse. All of his books thus far offer insightful points and are well worth reading.

Unfortunately 21 Lessons doesn't stand alone well, as many of the essays elaborate on ideas introduced in Sapiens and Homo Deus which are not fully explained here. I would recommend anyone who is interested in Harari's writing to start with those first.

The primary thesis that runs through all three books is that the success of humanity has been due to our ability to agree upon shared stories- such as religions, governments and economic philosophies- which have enabled us to coordinate our actions on a scale far beyond the capability of any other animal. He argues that one by one, the stories- among them religion, nationalism, communism, and liberalism- have all been either exposed as false or rendered irrelevant by social and technological changes, and now we are left with no single story to enable us to make sense out of the world.

Furthermore, we are faced with unparalleled challenges in several areas: global warming and the revolutions in infotech and biotech. In particular, the infotech and biotech revolutions promise to blur or even break the line between free will and manipulation, and perhaps even divide humanity into separate, stratified species with widely differing capabilities and mindsets.

Once an algorithm is able to predict your aptitudes and desires better than you can, will you let it make all your choices for you? If you don't, does that mean that you're irresponsible or "choosing to be unhappy" and therefore governments and insurance companies have the right to penalize you for it, or even force you to do as the algorithm says? Even if you don't consciously choose to be manipulated, indirect forms of manipulation through media and advertisements will become ever more sophisticated if allowed to develop unchecked.

This leads to Harari's central insight on the future: the nature of the changes we will face will necessarily lead to a redefinition of our conceptions of free will, justice, responsibility and every aspect of ethics. Though Harari doesn't state this outright, the logical implication is that we must probe deeper and discover an even more fundamental layer of ethical concepts than we are currently working with in order to make meaningful decisions on how such powers should be used.

Despite these merits, his arguments are not flawless. The weakest aspects of the book are his fundamentally uncritical view of liberal democracy and especially his argument on immigration policy (see here), both of which give the reader the distinct impression that he has forgotten, at least for a moment, that liberal democracy and the nation state are stories too. He also seems to conflate culture with national identity in this section, despite displaying a more nuanced understanding elsewhere in the book.

Issues aside from AI also tend to get the short shrift. There is very little discussion of efforts to deal with global warming, and even less about technologies other than AI which could nonetheless prove disruptive. Early in the book he briefly mentions the possible implications of the widespread adoption of blockchain, not least of which is that it could potentially starve governments of tax revenue if they aren't able to find alternatives (he floats the idea of a tax on information) quickly enough. This gives a brief hint that perhaps traditional democracies won't be able to survive in the future and a different kind of model might be required to face modern challenges- but he quickly forgets this and for the rest of the book continues to focus on democracy.

He also makes the occasional bizarre pronouncement, for example:

"Consciousness is the ability to feel things such as pain, joy, love, and anger."

I'm sure he would argue that this is a deliberate oversimplification, and he rightly points out that we don't know exactly what consciousness is yet, but it still seems quite the assumption to presume that consciousness and emotion must necessarily go together.

At the book's conclusion, Harari offers a personal note on his vipassana meditation practice, which he says has given him the clarity and focus to see beyond the narrative stories that we tell ourselves about the world. He offers this model of deep personal introspection and humility as an important tool in the effort to understand our world and find creative solutions. He admits that this will not by itself solve our problems, but argues that it is a good place to start.

His admitted anxiety about including this section proved well founded- it drew significant criticism even weeks before the book's release, perhaps most notably from Gerard DeGroot's farcical review in The Times. This kind of reaction may well be the reason why- aside from not wanting to be responsible for the creation of yet another story- Harari usually refrains from giving personal opinions on possible solutions.

Perhaps the greatest challenge humanity faces is that we are so uncomfortable with looking at ourselves in the mirror, so filled with existential dread of what we might find there and where it may lead us; for understanding requires the rejection of many prior thoughts and attitudes, the admittance of wrongs, and the courage to face the unknown. But face it we must. In this, at least, we would all do well to follow Harari's example.

Another great book by Harari

I loved this book, which, like Sapiens and Homo Deus, is a fascinating read. Yuval Harari provides a well-reasoned discussion of what he thinks the impacts that information technology, biotechnology, politics and religion will have on society and the individual in the future. While I didn’t agree with everything Harari wrote, I could still see how he arrived at his points. He doesn’t bludgeon the reader, but leads the reader to his conclusions. He has a way of writing that makes the pages fly by. This book is a stand-alone and doesn’t require that the reader have read his previous books. I recommend all three of his books.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

I received a free Kindle copy of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari courtesy of Net Galley  and Random House, the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.

I requested this book as the description made it sound interesting.  This is the first book by Yuval Noah Harari that I have read.

The title of the book is misleading in that it contains 21 opinions for the 21st century with no viable solutions offered to the issues raised. I found the first nine to be much more engaging and thought provoking than the final 12. It seemed that he decided on 21 lessons before he undertook the task and had to come up with several to fill out the title. The author's writing style is easy to read and he does not overly complicate the issues.

A number of ther reviewers enjoyed the entire book much more than I did, but it just didn't satisfy me after the first nine.

I enjoyed this thought provoking book immensely. Here is my full review .https://journalingonpaper.com/2018/08/18/book-review-21-questions-for-the-21st-century-by-yuval-noah-harari/

I really wanted to like this book but it was a struggle to get to the end of it. I was looking for more practical advice and it wasn't there. It was a lot of speculative thoughts on what the future could be. I guess I expected something else.

incredibly interesting and well researched musings on the state of the planet today. hugely recommended for people wanting to make sense out of not just THEIR world but the generalized world. mostly the essays engender copious amounts of thought in the form of self-reflection, despair, and cautious optimism.

Once again, Harari has taken his unique perspective on life, economics, technology, and humanity and summarized his thoughts in an easy to read and thought-provoking book. At times terrifying, humorous, and learned, Harari applies his unique take on things such as biometric sensors that help us make decisions and the current state of politics today. His previous books discussed the past and the future; this one concentrates on the present (mostly) with an eye to the future. Statements such as “Once AI makes better decisions than us about careers and perhaps even relationships, our concept of humanity and of life will have to change” are equally interesting and scary. The author paints a picture of a 1984-like world where 1% of humanity owns all the wealth, property and beauty and the rest of us live a nearly decision-free existence.

Harari’s style is easy to digest with sly humor interspersed among the caveats. I think his main goal is to get the reader to consider our own humanity and what we can do to ensure we all stay “human” and connected. For those who have read his other books (Sapiens and Homo Deus) the themes will be familiar. He touches on religion, terrorism, and technology with equal strength. He notes in multiple places that our personal information is being taken from us slowly via Facebook and other sites, and this will have a bigger impact on our future lives more than we think. Part of me wants to be worried, and the other part feels that I’ll be too old to matter when/if that ever comes to be.

21 Lessons was a bit drier than his other two works – that being said I think Homo Deus was my favorite. That does not make this work any less important, however. There is definitely something to be learned from the book, even if it just makes you more aware of the multitude of problems in the world today.

Full disclosure, I got a free advance copy of this book from the wonderful NetGalley service.

Harari covers a lot of ground in this book, all of it fascinating. He's able to make connections across disparate disciplines like almost no author I've ever read. This book will leave you better educated about changes coming in the future, but more importantly will leave you better positioned to think deeply about those changes and how they will impact our society. Read it today!

#21lessonsForThe21stCentury #NetGalley

I read Harari’s two other books (“Sapiens” and “Homo Deus”), and quite liked them, so when this one was available, I couldn’t help but request it. It did turn out to be an interesting read as well, dealing with current problems that we just can’t ignore: global warming, terrorism, the rise of harmful ideologies, etc. It’s definitely not seen through rose-tinted glasses, and it’s a good thing, for it’s time people in general wake up and—to paraphrase one of the many things I tend to agree with here—stop voting with their feet. (Between the USA and Brexit Country, let’s be honest: obviously too many of us don’t use their brains when they vote.)

I especially liked the part about the narratives humans in general tend to construct (nationalism and religions, for instance, being built on such narratives)—possibly because it’s a kind of point of view I’ve been holding myself as well, and because (as usual, it seems), the “narratives of sacrifice” hit regular people the most. Another favourite of mine is the part played by algorithms and “Big Data”, for in itself, I find this kind of evolution both fascinating and scary: in the future, will we really let algorithms decide most aspects of our lives, and isn’t it already happening? (But then, aren’t we also constructs whose functioning is based on biological algorithms anyway? Hmm. So many questions.)

I don’t necessarily agree with everything in this book, and to be fair, there was too much matter to cram everything in one volume, so some of it felt a little hurried and too superficial. I’ll nevertheless recommend it as an introduction to the topics it deals with, because it’s a good eye-opener, and it invites to a lot of introspection, questioning and thinking, which is not a bad thing.

Sapiens, also by written Harari, had been on my “to read” list for quite some time. When I finally read it I realized I should have read it sooner. I think Sapiens is a must read book for everyone on the planet. So, of course I was thrilled to have an opportunity to read 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. I was not disappointed.

Harari has incredible talent for being able to analyse the world as it is today and project into the future. Touching on many subjects such as artificial intelligence, religion, fascism, meditation and more, the reader must decide whether or not to agree with Harari’s assessments. Personally I think his vision of the future is truly credible and for those who agree, this read may be frightening. Although Harari doesn't offer much upside, at least if mankind can see our possible future, maybe we can be vigilant and try to take steps to avoid what may be in store.

These are the lessons. There is no real roadmap to a better tomorrow, rather warning signs along the way. Mankind owes Harari gratitude for a chance to take a better way.

This is a must read.

I have read the other two books by this author and while I did not love them, I did learn from them and they led to several wonderful conversations with other readers. I was hoping for that with this one too.

Unfortunately I do not see that happening. I felt as if this was much more opinion based than a provider of information. Subjects are touched on lightly and solely from the point of view of the author. There is also many references to his other works and the responses they received. I understand that this book was created because of unanswered questions from the first two books but do not think those questions were answered in this book.

This book changed the way I think about the world, which is the same thing I said about Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. Really practical guide to thinking and prioritizing in the 21st century, packed with interesting anecdotes and examples to illustrate his points. 5/5, fantastic book.

Another hit for yuval noah harari, “21 lessons” is a perfect follow-up to “sapiens” and “homo deus”. While the previous two focused more on the history and future of mankind, this one reveals the author’s insights on the individual - motivation, awareness, intelligence, and how we are influenced by education, religion, and experience. As an atheist and secularist, i found much to inspire and focus my thoughts and energy, rendered with originality, compassion, and clarity. I will continue to recommend all three of harari’s recent books to both customers and friends.